In the conventional art, parties that communicate with each other join an online game through the following process: the game inviter interacts with a game server to set up the game to be joined, then the inviter sends game information needed for setting up the game to invitees of the game; the invitees who decide to join the game visit the game server of the current game according to the received game information and provide the game server with the received game information; finally the game server adds the invitees into the game according to the game information provided by the invitees.
At present, the instant messaging technology and the online game technology can be combined. The Instant Messaging (IM) service is an Internet-based communication service, which mainly provides an instant communication function over networks. The IM service is widely applied and accepted on the Internet and may be provided by an IM system. With the rapid development of the Internet technology, both the instant messaging technology and the online game technology are developed and applied in a wide range. An IM user can invite other online IM users at any time to join an online game so as to promote the friendship among contacts through joining the same online game while communicating with the IM messages.
The conventional art is described hereinafter from the perspective of the IM service.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a process in which an IM user invites another IM user to join one online game in accordance with the conventional art. The process mainly includes the following.
S1: In an IM system, the inviter invokes a Game Client A in the apparatus of the inviter, which is a software application installed in user equipment and corresponding to a game.
S2: The inviter starts to join an online game at the Game Server side through the invoked Game Client A.
S3: The Game Server activates the online game which the inviter joins and provides corresponding services for the activated online game.
S4: The Game Server provides detailed game information of the online game for the Game Client A of the inviter.
S5: The inviter creates an instant message for all contacts (i.e. the invitees) of the inviter according to the detailed game information provided by the Game Server and the instant message created includes invocation data used for invoking the online game.
S6: The inviter adds current game status information into the created instant message and sends the updated instant message to a Messenger Server.
S7: The Messenger Server routes the instant message from the inviter to all invitees.
S8: The IM clients of the invitees receive the instant message that includes the invocation data used for invoking the online game.
S9: Some of the invitees decide to join the online game.
S10: The invitees that decide to join the online game invoke corresponding game clients in the apparatuses of the invitees respectively to parse and list the invocation data in the instant message.
S11: The game clients of the invitees, based on the parsed invocation data, join the online game served by the Game Server.
S12: The game server accepts new players (i.e. the invitees) and the process of inviting a friend by instant messaging to join the online game is thus completed.
As can be seen from the preceding process, an IM user in the IM system functions as the inviter to launch the game client in the apparatus of the IM user, to join an online game provided by a game server through the game client, to send invocation data relevant to the invocation of the online game through the IM client in the apparatus of the inviter in the format of an instant message, and to forward the instant message by a messenger server to all IM contacts of the inviter as invitees. The invitees that decide to join the online game join the very online game provided by the game server according to the received invocation data, and thereby the inviter and the invitees can join the same online game.
In the inviting process described above, the IM user functioning as the inviter takes all his contacts as invitees after launching an online game successfully and then invites the invitees to the online game. However, if all invitees refuse to join the online game, it becomes futile for the inviter to launch the online game and resources of the inviter are wasted, In addition, because the inviter takes all his contacts as invitees and sends relevant invocation data to every invitee, such group transmission of relevant invocation data to the contacts without any specific aim definitely wastes transmission resources of the network. Furthermore, because the inviter sends the invocation data relevant to the invocation of the online game in the format of an instant message through the messenger server, the workload of the messenger server for forwarding the instant message will increase and the resources of the messenger server are wasted.
It should be noted that those disadvantages exist with online games provided in the IM system as well as with any other types of online games. The foregoing description is only an example based on the IM service.